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Don’t let web hosting problems, become your problems.
Web hosts offer web hosting services to everyone from individuals, to small business owners, to multinational corporations.
However, web hosts don’t always live up to expectations. Web hosting problems are a common occurrence that can happen with almost any web host or web hosting company.
If you usually have a good experience with a web host then consider yourself lucky. Web hosting problems can be frustrating and a web host that is unreliable or has bad customer service can result in your website going offline for hours, days, or even weeks at a time.
In many cases, the web hosts will not offer you any compensation when these web hosting problems occur and they may take days to resolve the web hosting problem.
They say “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” So the best way to combat web hosting problems is to know what you can expect.
In this post, we are going to go over what you should look for in a great web host and how to recognize good web hosts from the bad ones, so you can switch web hosts if need be before web hosting even becomes an issue.
But, what kind of web hosting problems can we anticipate and be on the lookout for?
Lack of control over “their” servers.
Web hosting problems happen for several reasons, but the web host is going to be the most likely source of web hosting problems as web hosts often have or lease out servers located far away from you and handle web traffic from all over the world.
In these cases, your web host may simply be a third party or reseller without direct control over the servers that host your website.
If you’ve been experiencing web hosting problems then consider switching web hosts.
Web hosting problems may be something that you have to put up with from web hosts, but web hosting problems can also mean that your website is going to go offline, which may result in a loss of website visitors and ultimately a loss of website revenue.
It’s difficult to say just how often web hosting problems will happen, but web hosting problems can be more common for web hosts that are new to the web hosting industry.
Web Hosts overload their servers.
Many web hosts start with one or two small web servers and they may not have had any web hosting problems in the past, but once these web hosts grow and start offering web hosting services to hundreds or even thousands of people around the world, then web hosting problems can become more common.
If web hosting problems continue for an extended period, then web hosts lose website customers and eventually get a bad reputation. As a result, they just go out of business.
Web hosting problems can be frustrating for website visitors too. They get frustrated when websites are down or websites are slow to load. So if you find out that your visitors are experiencing web hosting problems as well, then it may be time to take action and switch web hosts.
The most common web hosting problems.
These common web hosting problems include:
1) Websites that are slow to load.
2) Websites that are down completely at times.
3) Web hosts may suspend your account for several reasons: such as exceeding the disk space limit on the hosting account, but often web hosts won’t tell you anything and just suspend your account, with no notice.
Thus, leaving you hanging in the lurch.
4) Security: Self-hosted WordPress installations have been known to have a security hole that can be exploited by hackers, as well as a lack of access control, which may allow anyone to edit any blog post or modify the site structure.WordPress is so popular it also makes it a target for hackers and spammers.
5) Maintenance: Faulty plugins and themes can cause your site to crash your server if not monitored.
6) Spam: Excessively spammy posts will also cause you a lot of trouble.
File Permission Issues: You should always take care when uploading files, as this could lead to a lack of access to the files themselves.
7) Resource Usage: Even the most basic blog will require PHP, MySQL, and Apache. If you have visitors, the server may be maxed out.
8) If you don’t take proactive steps to ensure the protection and security of your WordPress site, it’s as good as gone.
Every blog owner needs to understand that they’re responsible for their website security.
9) Data loss – There are many ways that your data can be lost or corrupted. While it’s not likely that WordPress itself will cause data loss, there have been many cases where corrupt databases, crashes, and other WordPress-related issues have resulted in lost data.
10) Unreliable web hosts – As mentioned above, 1 in 4 web hosting companies are expected to go out of business this year alone.
While there are ways to protect yourself from these types of risks, it’s always better to choose a host that has been around for many years and has successfully served many other clients.
11) Failure to make daily backups – Even if your blog is small and doesn’t receive a lot of traffic, it’s still very important that you backup all of your data daily.
This is the only way that you can ensure that your data is protected against malware, crashes, and other problems related to your blog.
If you don’t make regular backups of your site, you’re putting yourself at risk for permanent data loss.
12) Failure to update software – The WordPress security team releases updates regularly.
If you fail to update your software, you’re putting yourself at risk for security problems and malware infections.
At the very least, you should be updating your themes and plugins every month.
13) Failure to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress – As I mentioned above, there are certain risks involved with using outdated versions of WordPress.
Major upgrades, such as from version 3.7 to version 4.0, often include security patches and fixes for bugs that were discovered in previous versions of the software.
What can you do when web hosting problems occur?
- Switch web hosts.
- When switching web hosts, make sure to ask any new potential web host what their policy is for web hosting problems and how long it will take them to resolve any issues.
- Be sure and check out reviews and testimonials of the new web host as you don’t want to end up with another unreliable web host.
Safety measures you can take to mitigate web hosting problems before they happen.
Back-Up your website regularly.
These web hosting problems are much easier to deal with when you can back up your websites and databases regularly.
Many web hosts offer automatic backups, but if your web host doesn’t then this is something that you need to be doing yourself.
Once your website is backed up, even if there are large files in the backup, it’s still worth getting the backup just in case web hosting problems happen again.
Find a Web Host that monitors their servers regularly, especially for Shared Hosting.
If you have a dedicated server or a managed server, then the host should be aware if your website is offline, but shared hosting can cause web hosts to not notice that your website is offline for a long time.
So try and find a web host that monitors their servers closely and that will send alerts if your website is offline.
Take care of web hosting problems straight away and don’t wait.
Web hosting problems can be frustrating for both website owners and website visitors, but it’s best to resolve issues before they go on for an extended period or get out of hand.
Hundreds of hours go into selecting a web hosting company, perhaps days or even weeks.
But, for many small business owners, the process of choosing which self-hosted WordPress web host is usually much easier.
Web Hosting Problems, conclusion.
While web hosting problems are very common for web hosts, they can also be frustrating and costly.
If you find yourself with web hosting problems, you will need to act fast to resolve them before your business goes under due to web hosting issues.
Use the information presented in this article as a knowledge base that is meant to help educate you about web hosting problems and solutions, not as a step-by-step guide to fix web hosting issues.
The key takeaway from this post should be, “Nip those potential web hosting problems in the bud, before they happen!“
